Every now and then I read something that impacts my thinking beyond what I can even recognize at the moment. I once read such a powerful blurb about a mother who sat down to write an ad for her local paper:
Help Wanted: Five days/wk sitter for infant and toddler in my home from 6:50 am to 5:00 pm. Sitter will use parents’ vehicle for transport to appointments, library, outings. Interested applicant needs clean background, safe driving record. Love of reading, music and healthy nutrition required. Non-smoker/drinker who loves Jesus. Respectful, clean, honest, dependable. Must love children…
Stopping abruptly, she commented “I cannot finish. I now know that the exact person I am looking for, is me.”
I also read something similar to what you can read below when I was a young mom. I do not have information to credit either of these, since I am relying on my memory. Obviously I am paraphrasing, but these little illustrations profoundly impacted my thinking about the importance of the job I was doing as the mother of two young children.
We are all jugglers. We juggle housework and children and friendships and careers and husbands and cooking and laundry and service to God. We juggle grocery shopping and health care and hospitality and evangelism. We become masters at the juggling act. What we sometimes fail to realize is that some of the balls with which we juggle are rubber balls. When dropped, they are resilient. They bounce right back up and we can just incorporate them once again into the process of tossing and catching. But some of the balls with which we juggle are glass balls. Once dropped, they shatter into a million pieces and we can never retrieve all the pieces and put them back together again. Children are glass balls.
Always remember….Children ARE glass balls. Cradle, cushion, protect and keep them to one day deliver them back to the Father.
